in the WOSP as one of four “opportunity sites” in the “San Pablo Opportunity Area,” and “Opportunity Site #37” within greater West Oakland (WOSP 2014, 176). The WOSP defines opportunity sites as:
Individual parcels or groups of commercial and/or industrial parcels that are strategically located, and are vacant, underutilized, blighted, or are not developed to the intensity of land uses allowed by current zoning.
Development of these sites has been historically challenging, yet their strategic location affords them the potential to assist in revitalizing the areas surrounding them. (WOSP 2014, 126)
In developing the San Pablo Opportunity Area, the WOSP intends to “transform” the corridor with new residential buildings and commercial spaces, as well as “enhanced streetscapes that activate the street, increase pedestrian activity and enliven the neighborhood” (WOSP 2014, 176). Because of the strategic location of the lot, Opportunity Site #37 features prominently in WOSP development strategies for San Pablo Ave:
Opportunities for new development exist at each of the three corners of Opportunity Site #37, with additional infill development potential in between. Encourage the integration of all of these parcels into an overall development plan, potentially vacating the small section of Brush Street parallel to West Grand. […]. Implement substantial streetscape and landscape improvements along this site’s frontage, linking it thematically with the small pocket park at San Pablo and West Grand. (2014, 177)
Mixed-use commercial and residential development at the site is hoped to be a “strong retail-based anchor” that will become “catalyst” for further development in the
neighborhood (WOSP 2014, 176). The WOSP notes:
With new retail anchors at either end of the corridor, San Pablo Avenue can re-emerge as a thriving neighborhood-serving retail corridor and the numerous smaller vacant and underutilized sites in between will be more likely to infill with similar types of development. The two anchor
development Opportunity Sites can serve as gateways with streetscape and pedestrian amenities and improved roadway sections. (2014, 177)
As a “gateway” to West Oakland, the site’s aesthetics are of importance in encouraging further development in the area; The “improved streetscape” and “pedestrian amenities” mentioned in the plan are part of the WOSP’s larger vision for changes in West Oakland. The plan notes the utility of a “creative economy” in promoting aesthetic changes in the area, and identifies “urban farms and gardens” as “one of the vibrant ‘creative economy’ business types in West Oakland” (WOSP 2014, 351). Plans for increased green space in West Oakland are discussed in terms of their economic benefits, and in its “Reforestation Plan Objectives” the WOSP notes that the “potential net economic benefit to West Oakland that could be realized by planting a mix of as many as 113,210 street trees, trees in parks and public open spaces, and trees at private businesses and residences is
estimated to be as much as $6.7 million” (2014, 373). With an increase in trees and green space, the plan hopes to attract new businesses and (wealthy) new residents (Ibid.).
Another “creative economy” that is mentioned by the WOSP is the arts, and it sets out several strategies for using it to encourage development in West Oakland (WOSP 2014, 353). The first strategy outlined in the WOSP’s “Cultural Assets” section is to “acknowledge the arts as economic development catalysts” (2014, 356). In 2016, the Oakland City Council approved the creation of a “Black Arts Movement Business
District” along 14th Street in West Oakland (Jackmon, 2016). Marvin X Jackmon, a planner in the creation of the district and a well-known community member who worked with the Black Panthers in the 1960s, advocates for a “Afrikan Women’s Market Day” and a “Black Farmers Market” to help generate money in the Black Arts Movement Business District (Jackmon, 2016). In order to secure funds for the community, Jackmon writes that black businesses will “initially need help from City, State and Federal
agencies, along with generous donations from Silicon Valley firms and Globalists who have caused much of the displacement and destruction of the cultural vitality of our community. Governor Jerry Brown recently passed legislation to establish cultural districts throughout California” (2016, para. 14).
Jackmon’s invitation for help from the City of Oakland and Governor Brown may be shortsighted. As noted in the introduction, Brown used the creation of the Uptown Arts District in Oakland to attract new development and the gentrification of the neighborhood. As one Qilombo volunteer said in response to the Black Arts District plans, “How can you have a Black Arts District without Black people?” (Qilombo, 2017). Opportunity Site #37, which is only a few blocks from Uptown, is identified in the WOSP as a site where public art can be used to enhance the “community gateway” and attract new commercial and residential development (2014, 355). The WOSP mentions the importance of incorporating arts districts and public art “within the development of major new institutional, private, and non-profit developments” (2014, 356), and its strategy “Include Art-3” is to “work with community groups to install
historic and cultural features” (Ibid.). With this strategy, the WOSP works to recuperate the radical iconography of West Oakland’s past in order to promote an aesthetic that attracts new residents and development. Seen through this lens, the Afrikatown mural, which was intended to create a sense of community and place for black residents and activists resisting development, may in fact be welcomed by the city.
The City’s promotion of the arts seems ultimately more about attracting capital than it is about the wellbeing of artists and their communities. The “Creative Assets” section of the WOSP details city plans for monetizing artist spaces through regulatory controls and business license fees:
Intent: Foster a business-friendly approach to regulations affecting local West Oakland artists, supporting the local artist economy while requiring the submission of necessary business licenses. Such an approach could further recognize the ‘creative economy’ in West Oakland. (2014, 360)
In detailing this business-friendly approach, the plan states that “zoning regulations for home occupancy permits should be relaxed throughout the residential neighborhoods in the Plan Area, offering expanded self-employment opportunities and relaxed regulations about on-site sales” (Ibid.). Relaxed city regulation and code enforcement in one such artist space, the Ghost Ship, may have allowed the unsafe conditions implicated in the fire there that killed 36 people. Records indicate that city officials received several complaints that conditions inside the building were unsafe, but failed to enforce building regulations (Willon et al., 2017).
Following the fire, which was an international news story, the city enacted sweeping building inspections and evictions of artist spaces, in a reversal of its earlier
strategy of lax code enforcement. One of these spaces, the Omni Commons, was shut down not for any concerns over the safety of the warehouse, but rather over an obscure technicality in the building’s insurance map dating to the 1950s (Baldassari, 2016). The closure came as artists in Oakland voiced fears that the city would use the Ghost Ship tragedy to clear out artist spaces for new development, a strategy city councilmember Rebecca Kaplan critiqued as “Trumpian” (Ibid.).
These seemingly contradictory responses by the city to artist spaces and other unpermitted building use reflect city official’s recuperative strategies. One theme that seemed to emerge in the wake of the Ghost Ship, however, was that if spaces weren’t business friendly or lucrative, they’d be cleared. In December of 2016, fire inspectors shut down the Qilombo space, which has been used to organize the resistance to development on Opportunity Site #37. As Qilombo explain:
It is fueled by a systematic crackdown by the State & the city, where
opportunistic landlords and property management companies are excited for their building to not be up to code. It means property mangers can finally get rid of their pesky tenants who have “rights” and community support and keep the rent low. […]. Qilombo will work with the very comrades who stepped up after Ghostship to help us through a SERIES of fire inspections and false claims of our building being on fire (a slew of harassment against us and all DIY spaces). We will aim to give people the support needed to face
gentrification as it is. To debunk how the wrecklessness they call the law never favors our people and delegitimize the "evidence" needed uphold claims of foul play. (Afrikatown Community Garden, 2016)
Following the crackdown, Qilombo lost its lease on the space, but members have not yet been evicted. In January of 2017 Qilombo hosted an anti-gentrification art showcase and gallery, and in March it renewed its request for donations to help buy the Afrikatown plot
(Qilombo, 2017). In April, a post on the Afrikatown Community Garden Facebook page asked supporters to vote for the garden for a chance to win a $20,000 Seeds of Change grant. However, the garden did not generate enough votes for inclusion in the grant contest (Seeds of Change, 2017).
These relatively recent developments reveal the precarious predicament of Afrikatown. Condemned but not evicted, Qilombo operates the garden seemingly at the mercy of the city’s shifting policies and strategies. While the garden exists as a space of resistance against planned development at Opportunity Site #37, it also may help generate the new aesthetics central to the neighborhood transformation detailed in the WOSP. As a space intended for black and brown sovereignty, the political vision of the garden space may generate future conflict with white volunteers and new residents, who are rapidly changing the demographics of West Oakland. While Qilombo hopes to receive enough donations to buy the expensive lot, it seems its fate will be decided by the city.
DISCUSSION
These two case studies attempted to understand how urban green space relates to processes of gentrification in West Oakland. The gardens were selected because of their important geographic situation, as well as for their differing intentions. The findings of my research showed that these gardens serve multiple purposes for different actors. The organizers of Union Plaza Park intended the space to feed and educate marginalized residents, but the garden has also been used by developers to sell adjacent property, leading to the displacement the neighborhood’s most vulnerable groups. Afrikatown, on the other hand, was created to resist new development in the neighborhood, but city planning documents show that it may nevertheless accomplish the aesthetic
transformation central to gentrification.
These conflicting effects of the gardens illustrate the complexity of processes of gentrification and its impacts on residents. My research shows that it’s possible for urban green space to exist both in defiance and invitation of new development, and highlights the importance of aesthetics in processes of gentrification. The findings of the Union Plaza Park case study are in agreement with earlier research that has shown urban green spaces being used by developers. In addition, the “urban reforestation” project of
residents in the area connects to discussion on the cultural significance of green space in the gentrifying city. The use of Afrikatown to resist gentrification, on the other hand, represents a unique case that, as far I can tell, has not yet been discussed in the academic literature. However, neighborhood clean ups and the creation of new aesthetics can still
be seen occurring there, and from this perspective the garden can be interpreted as an example of recuperation by the growth machine. Explain just a bit more how it does
These findings raise the question of how urban gardens may be better designed to resist gentrification. In this discussion I will relate my findings back to the existing literature in an attempt to address this question, and ultimately to better understand the specific cultural and political significance of garden spaces in gentrifying black
neighborhoods.
Citizenship in the Gardens
One of my research questions was whether or not the gardens accomplished their goal of addressing food insecurity, and if they did not what their purpose was. In the case of Union Plaza Park, I wanted to know if its crops actually fed marginalized residents in the neighborhood. In addition, I was interested in whether or not the garden were successful at generating support and funds for City Slicker Farms, the organization that runs it. I had similar questions for Afrikatown, although its organizers did not state that the garden was intended to feed food insecure residents.
My findings suggest that the gardens do not support food insecure residents in their neighborhoods, but that overall they serve the interests of their organizers, and in the process create forms of citizenship. From my observation and interviews at Union Plaza, it did not appear as though the garden attracted significant interest from black residents, houseless residents, and other marginalized groups. Farm Manager Joseph’s efforts to help the surrounding houseless community, by teaching them how to prepare and
consume raw vegetables and by constructing a “classroom” on Fitzgerald Park, all seemed to fail. In addition, I only observed one person of color stopping by to purchase food from the farm stand, while the overwhelming majority of supporters appeared to be wealthy residents from other neighborhoods who were simply passing through.
The seeming reluctance of black neighborhood residents to engage with the garden supports Guthman’s (2008) study of Oakland farmers markets, which found that such spaces “hail white subjects” and discourage participation by people of color (395). In addition, this finding is mirrored by Ghose & Pettygrove (2014), who found that community gardens cultivate racist agendas (1094), and exclude residents who do not behave according to established rules and norms (1108). Farm Manager Joseph’s attitude of disdain for the “unsightly” “nuisance” of the houseless population, and his reluctance to “turn the garden into a soup kitchen,” might explain why that group was reluctant to engage in the organization’s “education” attempts.
On the other hand, Union Plaza is one of many “successful” community gardens that City Slicker Farms has opened. Since building Union Plaza Park, the organization has receive large grants from the city to create new gardens such as the West Oakland Farm Park, which seems to have incorporated concepts from Union Plaza such as the “classroom” structure. The failure of the classroom structure at Union Plaza, along with the relative lack of community interest in City Slicker’s educational agenda and farm stand, did not prevent the organization from investing taxpayer funds to recreate them in the new park. Instead of addressing the community’s actual needs, City Slicker Farms’ use of public funds to create a private garden for education and the sale of organic
vegetables promotes a neoliberal agenda of self-improvement draped in the façade of food justice activism.
In an analysis of the food security movement in California, Guthman (2006, 1177) notes that community garden projects are increasingly viewed as “mechanisms to
produce ‘empowered,’ self-sufficient subjects and encourage ‘citizenship’ more broadly, irrespective of the actual production of food.” As Brown (2005, 42) notes, in
neoliberalism, “political discourse on all matters is framed in entrepreneurial terms” that only value what is profitable. The neoliberal processes driving development in West Oakland both create the conditions of economic insecurity that produce hunger, while also restricting participation by “unfit” residents in the private enterprises meant to address them. In this way, community building in the new West Oakland is only allowed for those who are capable of participating in the market.
The promotion of neoliberal citizenship in the garden also encourages vigilant citizenship by new neighborhood residents. The monitoring and policing of gentrifying neighborhoods by new residents has been discussed by Jacobs (1996), Smith (1996), and Herbert (1998), but the vigilance they noted relied on the state to enforce it. This older form of vigilance can be seen occurring at Union Plaza Park in the reporting of “blight” by residents to the OPR, which resulted in the removal of City Slicker Farm’s education structure. However, Newman’s (2013) vigilant citizenship is also at work around the garden. As Newman writes, “vigilant citizenship is a departure from previous forms of vigilance because it articulates with a trend in neoliberal urban governance that shifts previously ‘public’ responsibilities (in this case, preserving order and managing public
space) to privileged groups of residents” (2013, 949). Farm Manager Joseph exercises vigilant citizenship when he collects trash, paints over graffiti, and restricts the use of the garden by neighborhood houseless residents. Residents of “The Ranch” at Dogtown similarly pacify their “ravaged” neighborhood by participating in local political projects and installing lighting and colorful murals on the street.
This expression of vigilant citizenship is contrasted by the historical vigilance of the Black Panthers, who formed “citizens’ patrols” in West Oakland not as a replacement to the state’s policing, but as protection against it. Their Black Nationalist project
imagined the community as a sovereign space granting citizenship and protection to all black residents. This black citizenship was opposed to the liberal project in the Civil Rights Movement, which emphasized individual representations of “good black citizens” and celebrated assimilation into the existing society (Hohle 2013, 12). In contrast, the Black Nationalist project attempted to create a separate state, which defined citizenship on the group scale in terms of race (Ibid.).
This understanding of citizenship informs the politics of Afrikatown, which is imagined as a space of sovereignty for black residents. Although participation in the garden is open to everyone, citizenship is granted along lines of race, with white
volunteers being identified as “allies” rather than members. This works in opposition to the neoliberal and vigilant citizenships of Union Plaza, which erase the material
inequalities of race and class and reward citizenship to those who embody notions of progress, cleanliness, and self-determination. The activists of Afrikatown, on the other hand, identify the systemic privileges that whites possess as a class, and their politics
therefore seek to empower black residents that would have been denied participation in Union Plaza and similar gardens. As a space constructed in defense against capitalist development, Afrikatown’s rejection of neoliberal citizenship is fundamental to its larger purpose.
Symbolism and Aesthetics of the Gardens
As a sites were citizenship are produced, Union Plaza Park and Afrikatown exist both as a physical pieces of land, and as symbolic spaces of belonging. In their existence as
symbolic spaces, both gardens inspire action to transform the surrounding physical landscape. In the case of Union Plaza, the idealized aesthetics of green space have led City Slicker Farms to “clean up” the area of graffiti, trash, and drug paraphernalia, and to